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August 27, 2025

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EDITORIALS

Mar 23, 2012

Resistance to bigger pension roll

The Democratic Party of Japan has been calling for incorporating irregular workers into kosei nenkin (a pension scheme originally for permanent corporate workers) as a means of helping to stabilize their life. But the plan the government and the DPJ adopted March 13 shows that they bowed to pressure...

EDITORIALS

Mar 23, 2012

Diversifying LNG supply sources

As Japan's reliance on thermal power generation increases following the Fukushima nuclear crisis, and as the possible blockade of the Strait of Hormuz cannot be ruled out due to the conflict between the West and Iran over Tehran's nuclear program, Japan must strive to diversify sources of liquefied natural...

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 22, 2012

NATO's Libyan war lessons

By Ken Gude and John D. Podesta

NATO's intervention in Libya one year ago helped to avert a humanitarian catastrophe and created the conditions for Libya's citizens to end Col. Moammar Gadhafi's dictatorship. The military operation highlighted important improvements in European leadership since the Bosnian debacle in the 1990's, but...

CARTOONS / DAHL'S JAPAN

Mar 22, 2012

Sumo Fuel Imports

COMMENTARY

Mar 22, 2012

Pinpointing the causes of the U.S. economic crisis

By Robert Samuelson

Four years after the onset of the financial crisis — in March 2008 Bear Stearns was rescued from failure — we still lack a clear understanding of the underlying causes. Hundreds of studies and books have given us an increasingly detailed picture of what happened without conclusively answering why....

COMMENTARY

Mar 22, 2012

China's military buildup breeds distrust

By Michael Richardson

Since China announced another big rise in its military spending earlier this month, Chinese officials in Beijing and diplomats posted in Asia-Pacific countries have been trying to spread an orchestrated message to the region: Don't be alarmed.

EDITORIALS

Mar 22, 2012

Provocative rocket launch plan

North Korea on March 16 announced that it will launch a rocket mounted with an Earth observation satellite in mid-April. It insists that every nation has a right to pursue peaceful use of outer space. But given its nuclear weapons program, it is not far-fetched to suspect that the launch is really a...

EDITORIALS

Mar 22, 2012

Changing electric power policy

The catastrophe at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant has demonstrated that the long-standing assertion by the power industry and the government that nuclear power is safe and cheap is sheer propaganda and a gigantic myth.

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 21, 2012

Can the world's poor nations save the rest of us?

By Olivier Ray and Jean-michel Severino

Events in 2012 so far have confirmed a new global dissymmetry. Caught between unprecedented financial insecurity and a somber economic outlook, the rich OECD countries and their middle classes fear geopolitical weakening and downward social mobility. In much of Asia, Africa and Latin America, however,...

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 21, 2012

Goldman Sachs has a long history of duping its clients

By William D. Cohan

Greg Smith doesn't know the half of it.

COMMENTARY

Mar 21, 2012

Nearing the end of tyranny?

By Hugh Cortazzi

President Vladimir Putin in Russia, President Bashar Assad in Syria and President Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe are detested by many of their fellow countrymen who would like to see them overthrown and tried for human rights abuses. They depend on a close coterie of guards and aides who have to be kept happy....

EDITORIALS

Mar 21, 2012

Painting a target on Mr. Kony

Mr. Joseph Kony is a nasty piece of work. The warlord is the founder of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), an insurgent group that has been battling the government in Uganda for over two decades. Founded in 1987, the group was formed as a rebel group that fought for power and spoils against southern Ugandans...

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.

From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past

By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Ishii Iron Works remakes self for workers, new energy

Ishii Iron Works remakes self for workers, new energy

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